Saturday, February 20, 2016

A stragegy for defeating the Democrat politics of resentment and character assassination

What one must learn: first, that Democrats no longer play by conventional rules of intellectual debate, but are Machiavellian opportunists, using the media as a tool of intimidation and character assassination; second, to realize that traditional conservatives are completely ineffective because they haven't realized this; third, that an effective yet moral strategy for change is available if the sleeping conservative giant would wake up and use a little imagination. Illustrations provided.

6 comments:

You make my case. I enjoy watching Maher sometimes, especially when he's debunking "liberal bullshit" about Islamic terrorism being comparable to Christianity, as he does HERE.

However, most of the time Maher presents himself as the consummate bullshit artist, as he does in the video you linked. There is no interest in learning anything from his guest, but only in pillorying him for the benefit of audience guffaws and TV ratings. This is exactly what D'Sousa exposes in the video I posted.

As Princeton Professor Harry G. Frankfurt says in his book, On Bullshit, "The bullshitter is neither on the side of the true nor of the false. His eye is not on the facts at all. He does not reject the authority of the truth, as the liar does, and oppose himself to it. He pays no attention to it at all. By virtue of this, bullshit is a greater enemy of truth than lies are."

D'Sousa isn't proposing "an effective yet moral strategy for change". He's suggesting that conservatives (1) become bullies because they are the righteous and (2) financially support his pet project -- a movie for the 2016 presidential election.

In listening to D'Sousa, I didn't hear Christ. I thought of The Prince's Machiavelli and Joseph Goebbels.

The reader's words show him to have drawn erroneous conclusions in two ways.

First, they erroneously suggest that I had intended to communicate something of 'Christ'. While Christians my infer what they will about the compatibility of their faith with D'Sousa's view, I was addressing strictly his suggestions as a helpful counter-strategy against Democrat character assassination and ad hominems. It goes without saying that the Pax Roma is not Pax Christi; but that doesn't make Pax Romana a bad thing. The spread of the Gospel (of Pax Christi) was expedited by the Pax Romana, as St. Paul would doubtless be quick to tell you.

Second, they erroneously conflate "an effective yet moral strategy for change" with "becoming (self-righteous) bullies" and "financially supporting his pet project. These are not the same thing. The effective strategy he promoted did not consist in vicious ad hominems or character assassination, but in having large numbers of people send to Costco (in this case) reviews in which they protested the big box store's capitulation to leftist bullying and showing photos of themselves cutting up their own Costco cards to boycott that business. There is nothing immoral about any of this. It consists in what is generally called "voting with your feet," or "... with your dollars." D'Sousa's suggestion that people help promote his film by actually seeing it in theaters was indeed self-serving, but serves the second intention (or double effect) of also promoting awareness of facts about Hillary Clinton (in this case) that the left-wing media simply refuse to cover. There is nothing immoral about wanting people to know what you think the facts are either.

As to Machiavelli or Goebbels, the shoe is surely on the other foot. Nothing is more nefarious than the behavior of the DNC and leftists in using the national media (now in their pockets) as an instrument of monological propaganda. Goebbels, you will remember, was the Nazi minister of propaganda. He would fit right in.

None of this is to suggest, however, that the Republicans are the Catholic party of choice these days. I have elsewhere stated my criticisms of classic laissez-faire capitalism and Austro-libertarian political economy (Von Mises, Rothbard, Woods, Rockwell, Sirico, et al.) and the importance of rethinking the tradition of Catholic Social Teaching for contemporary politics.

The DNC playbook since at least the eighties has been Saul Alinsky's "Rules for Radicals." Every democrat candidate for any office from president down to dog catcher uses it "religiously," so to speak. Exhibit A: the disgusting Clinton family.

Republicans have been so flummoxed by bogus social doctrines like "equality" and "diversity" that they are afraid to use Alinskyan tactics against democrats, although they do so with impunity against their own kind. Exhibit A: the disgusting Bush family.

One on one, capitalists have never been any match for socialists, as republicans have never been for democrats. Socialists and democrats are bare knuckle brawlers, who kick men when they're down and don't stop until nothing recognizable is left to kick. Capitalists and republicans rely on hired assassins and "the fix is in" bosses. But when these methods fail, so do capitalists and republicans, because their type of flummery requires at least an illusion of concern for fair play and the rule of law. Thus both are captive to the social gospel so skillfully promoted by Alinskyans, a gospel codified in the nicely "pastoral" language of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. In American politics, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 is the perfect analogue of the Second Vatican Council.